


Sleepless Nights

by CaliHart



Series: Mating Games Rejects [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Drugged Sleep, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:39:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaliHart/pseuds/CaliHart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter doesn’t sleep for four days after the fire at his apartment building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Mating Games bonus challenge #2-sleepover, but I'd already written something else for that challenge so I took my time on this.

Peter doesn’t sleep for four days after the fire at his apartment building. Every time he starts to drift off, he snaps awake again. He gets more twitchy and paranoid the longer he stays awake. By the third day, he’s obsessive about the air conditioner, and he avoids the stove and any source of heat, including blankets. He starts to smell a bit even though he takes three showers a day, and when Derek gets fed up and invades one he finds out it’s because Peter makes the water so cold all he can do is curl up in a ball under the spray, his fingers numb and skin turning blue in places. After that, Derek takes his daily shower with Peter, the water edging between warm and cold so it’s not intolerable for either of them, and he makes sure Peter actually cleans himself. 

Peter won’t let anyone touch him, not even Derek. He flinches away when anyone gets close. Stiles has shared the theory that Peter would be more settled if he was cuddled for an hour or two, since wolves rely on touch as part of comfort, but they can’t get him to agree to it. 

Eventually he can’t stay awake any more. They have him curl up in Derek’s bed while everyone else is there so that he knows he’ll be safe in case of a fire, but he wakes up screaming before even an hour has passed. Chris gets fed up with it and pours a sedative into Peter’s drink, and they all relax when he passes out for six hours. 

They find out after a while that Peter can’t sleep if he can’t hear someone’s heartbeat, even fighting the sedative to wake up, but Derek can’t always be there for him, so he starts getting passed from house to house. Peter’s bed changes daily; from Derek’s bed, to the McCall’s couch (Isaac has the guest room there); curled up on the floor outside Lydia’s bedroom door, an air mattress next to Stiles’s bed, or, if he’s unavailable, down the hall next to the Sheriff’s bed. He doesn’t know or trust Kira or her family well enough to sleep there. Allison screams the first time she wakes up to find him on the couch in their apartment, and he panics and crams himself in the hall closet for an hour before Chris is able to coax him out. 

They set up a loose schedule for him. He typically stays with Derek on weekends, when the teenagers are more likely to stay up late and be out in town or at each other’s houses. One night listening to Stiles tap away at his computer for three hours was enough for them to know it wasn't easy for Peter to sleep if someone was awake nearby. He spends nights at the McCall and Stilinski houses only when Melissa and John don’t have night shifts; Melissa still doesn’t quite trust him, and sometimes Peter has to take refuge in John’s room when Stiles’s dreams get too heated or make him talk or get restless. He only stays at the Martin home one night a week; Lydia won’t tolerate him more than that. The remaining days are split between Derek and the Argents. 

Peter gradually starts to relax around them. He won’t flinch if they get too close, but he will move away. He begins to accept small, brief touches, as long as he knows they’re coming. His showers grow shorter and less cold, though still nowhere near warm, and he comes out of them clean even if Derek isn’t there. They’re ready to try having him visit his own apartment, which he hasn’t been back to in a month now, when a fire witch shows up in Beacon Hills. They don’t know if she means harm or not, but they don’t take any chances. Fire alarms and smoke detectors are checked and placed in every home, and Peter gets left to stay in the Argent apartment, which has the most protection against nonhuman beings. 

It’s odd at first, because Peter has never spent more than one night at a time with the Argents, so they have to get used to moving his pile of pillows and blankets (which he’s finally using again, and in excess) aside if they want to use the couch, and there’s another set of bottles in the shower, a third toothbrush, dinner made for three instead of two. But on the second morning, Peter makes coffee for Chris, eyeing the machine from a distance until it’s no longer hot. On the third morning, he’s making pancakes for Allison before she goes to school, up early because of a nightmare, looking exhausted and ridiculous with a flowery apron Chris didn’t know they had. 

By the end of the week, the fire witch is gone, having burned nothing more than a few bonfires in the woods, but Peter is cooking bacon at the Argent’s stove, wearing oven mitts so the grease can’t splatter onto his skin and being overly cautious, but still doing it. They discuss it and decide the stability is good for him. They don’t tell him the witch is gone.

By the end of the second week, his showers are verging on warm again. He accepts the few hugs that are offered to him, and doesn’t move away when Allison sits next to him on the couch in the pre-dawn light to watch the cartoons that are the only thing playing on tv that early in the morning. The casual touches and brushing shoulders from the other wolves don’t make him flinch, Derek’s hand rubbing across the back of his neck makes him lean closer. When hot oil pops onto his skin one afternoon, Chris’s firm grip on his wrist holding his hand under cold water in the sink is welcome. 

At the end of the third week, he’s sleeping in Chris’s bed with him, the blankets kicked off when it gets too hot to be covered in both blankets and hunter. He easily makes bacon to go with Allison’s eggs or pancakes in the mornings before she leaves for school. Peter finally sits down with Derek and tells him that he can’t go back to his own apartment, that the thought alone gives him nightmares. Derek takes Peter’s keys and goes to the building, signs paperwork to cancel Peter’s lease, and moves all of Peter’s possessions into the loft after giving them a thorough wash to get rid of the last hints of smoke. 

When the month ends, Peter’s clothes hang in the closet next to Chris’s and sit in the empty dresser drawers. He gets sleepy hugs from Allison that last minutes on mornings after he has nightmares. His old apartment no longer features in those nightmares; they’re all old ones, mainly about the first fire. He sleeps okay when Allison spends the night at Lydia’s and Chris is out of town on business, but he sleeps better wrapped up in Chris’s arms. And when the water is burning against his back and he’s shuddering his release into Chris’s mouth, well…he finds that hot showers aren’t so bad after all.


End file.
